Sucker Punch
by Idryth
Summary: Very short Arizona POV from 7x13 to get her from her apartment conversation with Callie to her hospital chat with Teddy.  Hope you like it.   Many thanks to D for being so fast with the read and tweaks.


It's so strange how you can go through life knowing the meaning of a phrase without ever truly understanding the feeling behind it. Then one fine day you are forced to discover exactly what a phrase like "sucker punch" means.

It's when something completely unexpected hits you in the stomach and your body feels like the lovely muscle that is so integral to our breathing - the diaphragm - suddenly moved to your throat. In addition to all of that, all the air you had in your body is expelled with such great force that you think you may never breathe again. You know, that one.

To be clearer, it's the thing that happens to you when the woman you love, have loved from the first time you can remember seeing her smiling as she talked to a patient with a distal ulnar fracture, the one you came back from your dream for tells you she not only slept with someone else when you were gone but she's pregnant with her best friend's baby. Do you throw up or just sink to the floor and never get up again? Maybe both.

You're frozen in time, wanting the words to go away - wanting the love of your life to have not said them, not to have just told you that someone else touched her and loved her. I wanted to be the only one she wanted, her last... wanted her to never be touched in that way by anyone else again. I had thought I was going to be. I thought she'd wait.

Stupidity is something I never attribute to myself, but it surely did apply this time.

All I could hear was my heartbeat pounding in my head as I struggled for control and bent over with my hands on my knees to stave off my nausea.

And when oxygen started to flow again and my brain cells started to kick in - then I just kept hearing those words in my mind. The "pregnant" and "Mark's baby" words.

I thought I'd had a chance to get her to try again and now... I played the words again, fast forwarding over the parts that cut me to the bone. Was she really asking me if I still wanted another chance or was that some sick joke I would never have thought her capable of playing?

I tried to take slow, calming breaths so that I could stand straight again and face her, pursing my lips and closing my eyes - one breath in, one out. Rinse, repeat.

Never had I felt so old as when I tried to straighten my body in that cold elevator, not at all sure that I hadn't aged about sixty years. Cognizant of the closing of the elevator doors but that was about it.

And then came the hardest words I'd ever spoken, so hard it took me a few tries to run up to them and jump. I croaked out, "Are yo..." I couldn't look in her eyes and I had to do that, just had to. _One breath in, one out._ And once more with the breaths and the rinse repeat. "Are you with..."

I closed my eyes one final time, trying to find the good man in one hell of a storm to hang onto. I just held there for one more second and then opened them again, looking into the eyes I'd always felt were unable to keep anything from me. They would tell me the truth.

One more breath in and on the exhale, "Is that who..." Had to pause to lick my lips on that particularly awful tasting pill. "...what you want now?"

She looked so tired, her eyes so sad when she answered, "It just happened, Arizona. I missed you so much and it just happened."

I tried to focus on what she said and what she didn't say. "Okay." Never in my life have I taken so long to say so few words.

"And is it... are we..." _Breathe. _I met her eyes again, "I need time. I... need... time."

The next words would be the ones that I couldn't make a mistake with. The words I had to say without my gaze leaving her eyes. "Is - is there still a reason for me to take that time?"

It didn't even take her a breath to reply, "Yes."

"Okay," I replied, sounding much calmer than I felt. "I - I need to go now. I need to go. I need to think."

She nodded slowly, her face a study of knowledge of the pain she'd just caused. "It just happened," she breathed.

I nodded back, "Time."

I don't remember leaving the elevator or the hospital, and I wasn't at all sure how I managed to get back to my apartment. Maybe I'd learned the feeling behind the phrase "shell shocked" too. Neat. Two for the price of one. But there I was safe and sound, or safe anyway.

I hadn't slept a wink and had gone through a whole box of tissues through the night. The next morning found me on the couch, still just trying to find a way to process everything. I'd taken it apart, put it together, blown it all up again and, dare I say, rinse repeat of a different kind so many times.

My "process" had taken me on quite a road. Anger, jealousy, self loathing, frustration and pretty much every other awful emotion there is in the world. Oh, did I mention anger?

I'd done the facts thing. Like the fact I loved Calliope Torres so deeply that I would likely never be able to get her out of my heart no matter how many other women there were in the world.

The fact that I'd left her standing there in the airport. That I had done it deliberately, and wasn't that another bitter pill to swallow. I'd broken her heart in an airport because I knew without a doubt she wouldn't be happy and I couldn't face watching her crumble before my eyes over the next three years.

That would've shattered my heart into more pieces than I could've ever picked up. So I guess you could add that I'm selfish to the list of facts.

And maybe part of it was that, as Mark said, I do bail. Maybe I just made one of those poor judgment calls I sometimes make with my life and just ... left.

I had to finally get around to the jealousy, the green eyed monster that had always been a problem for me. Fact was, I didn't want to think of other people touching or having touched what I love. Insecurity, I suppose. It's always been that way, but with Callie it felt sometimes like the jealousy was tenfold.

And there it was. I wasn't at all sure how to get over the fact that even though we loved each other, she had allowed someone else to touch her.

Odd how I'd once told her that people would be lining up for her, I guess I just never expected her to move on so fast when I was in Africa. It never even occurred to me to try to move on over there, to try to find something else. I was utterly and completely miserable without her.

Because somehow, in the universe's totally screwed up fashion, the Carter Madison Grant had been my dream and then I met Calliope Torres. And in a country thousands of miles away where I was doing work that was making such a total difference for children, I came to realize that Callie had become my dream. My miracle. The miracle I'd had in my hands and discarded.

And that's where I'd gotten to when she came to the apartment and told me she'd wanted me in her plan, in her life. Had asked me if I was in or not... in for the Mighty Oak and everything beyond that.

Most of it was exactly what I'd wanted to hear, unfortunately, that Mighty Oak part most definitely wasn't. But if I could move on and have this baby, Mark's baby, with Callie - we had a chance of that forever I'd envisioned on the long trip home from Africa.

She was my drug, my everything and I was so far into my addiction that even through the haze of anger over what felt like betrayal, even though I was the one who left, I knew this was it - it had to be it. Forever.

Of course I was in.

I sat there and stared at the empty space where she'd been a few minutes ago, before she'd left to give me the time I'd asked for. I had a choice. Lie to her and bail again or finish the processing part and start to stand up for myself and our relationship.

And again, what choice did I have?

Because, dammit, there just was no doubt in the world that I was going to make sure nobody else would ever touch her that way again. Ever.

Jealousy be damned, that's just the way it was because our love was going to win this fight and that had to be the way it was, is and will always be.

And because, in a parking lot full of emergency vehicles months ago, I had told her that I couldn't live without her and had then proven to myself that was, without a doubt, truer than any words I'd ever spoken.

Nodding to myself, I unfurled my body from the couch, breathing deeply as I stood up, then spoke to the empty apartment, "You're mine, Calliope Torres and I'm yours and it's as simple as that."

"I will make it work. _We_ will make it work. So just you look out, Arizona's back in town."


End file.
